Dam fool

Friends Esther and Sacha are visiting the UK from the Falkland Islands, so Thomasina gathered us together for a midweek dinner. Berry and I cycled an hour each way from Cambridge as Tom lives in a village on the fringe of the fens. It went smoothly until I stopped to take this photo from a bridge, as the surrounding landscape is as flat as a pancake and provides no vantage points. As I dilly dallied on the bridge, I got in the path of Chloe, a work friend who went on maternity leave and had a baby two weeks ago, driving towards me over the lip of the bridge. With her baby daughter in the car, the last thing she needed was me arsing about. However, she's very unflappable is our Chlo.

It was so excellent seeing Sacha and Esther, who are real outdoors lovers. Esther regularly remained in Hebridean waters in Apriltime until her skin turned blue, during trips we've made up there. Their daughter Xenia is now six, and I've been amused in recent years to see her looking so miserable in photos adjacent to penguins and seals, which the Falkland Islands enable you to get up close and personal with. In stark contrast to her parents, she prefers being inside, perhaps in protest at the Falklands winds, which sound ferocious and unrelenting.

Tom is an excellent host and cook. She roasted pork over a BBQ and made a damson fool using fruit from a tree in her garden. Overall an evening very much worth the long cycle. I'd have been a dam fool to miss seeing this lot.